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I promise I’m not trying to get too personal and hear about intimate medical details about your children. I’m mostly wondering how thorough everyone’s pediatrician is with them during check ups. I feel like I’m always seeing how people don’t know how to be firm with their children without resorting to “what our parents did” by hitting their children. Or they don’t seem to be too aware of why certain things are checked or what’s developmentally normal for a particular age. Like the main focus of check ups is to get up to date on vaccinations and see how much a child has grown.
We have had three different pediatrician’s for our children in the 14 1/2 years since I became a mom. I would probably still be with our original pediatrician if we didn’t move an hour away. I couldn’t see driving all that way for sick visits so ten years ago when we moved to the area we live now I found a new pediatrician. I wasn’t wildly familiar with the area and my options were limited with what my insurance would cover. So sticking in our town I had two choices and I chose a doctor based on the fact that his office staff was polite to me on the phone and that they could get my daughter’s 18 month check up done before she turned 2. Not the best reasons to choose a pediatrician and I definitely do not recommend it, but it worked well for us for over four years until my son came along. I feel like this old school doctor was good for my older children, but newborns it turned out he wasn’t so good at.
Or maybe I would have been looking for a new pediatrician regardless of how he treated my son. His practice went through a lot of drastic changes at about the time my son had come along. The polite office staff left and was replaced with very rude office staff and his partner and him decided to split the practice. All of this probably should have raised red flags, but it wasn’t until he failed for 3 months to diagnose my son’s failure to thrive properly that I realized this wasn’t working. Of course looking for a new doctor was not easy. I couldn’t get the kids into the other practice in town my insurance accepted so I had to look outside of my town for that. As we were trying to get my son evaluated by Birth to Three I had a helpful therapist recommend a doctor to me. I called her up, explained our situation, and she diagnosed my son with acid reflux over the phone. Of course she wanted to see him first, but she took the time out to listen to me. And the next day I had an appointment for a couple of weeks later on his six month birthday. She took all three kids too.
But let me get back to the point here. The one thing that was common with all three of these doctors was how much they went over non medical stuff with me. Going over development, discussing our family life, who watches the kids during the day, and even how to effectively discipline the kids. So it makes me wonder if I “lucked” out with three pediatricians who took the time to discuss more than just medical stuff? Or are people just not listening to these parts of the talks with the pediatrician. Or perhaps they just think what does a pediatrician know about disciplining my child, she only sees her for 2 seconds a few times a year.
I love our current pediatrician. She’s quick, but thorough. A few weeks ago my 11 year old daughter got her finger smashed in a locker at school and we were worried it might be broken. So we went to the doctor to have her look at it to determine if it needed an x-ray. Ultimately she said that she thinks the joint was just pinched and with rest and ice over the weekend it would start to feel better, but if not to call Monday morning to schedule an x-ray. She was right in her diagnosis, but she didn’t stop there. Despite the fact that we would have her physical in a month she decided to check on her asthma as well and she spent a lot of time in that room with us going over how we can best avoid her triggers and treat her asthma symptoms without resorting to changing her medication.
When we have physicals we talk about everything pertaining to the kids and their well being. When they are little it’s how to give consequences and not say ‘no’ all the time. Potty training, school, puberty. She has something for everything. And even with my child development and psychology background I really appreciate her wisdom. As someone who has not only raised her own children, but someone who has also seen a lot of parents struggle with different areas of parenting. She offers so much more than just her book knowledge to us and I hope everyone has that in their pediatrician. But sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one.
We’re always resorting to the internet for answers. Hey don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that. After all, that’s possibly what has you all reading me on a regular basis. Seeing how I deal with the day to day struggles of raising kids in all different parts of their lives. But the thing is, I’m only an expert in my own kids. I see lots of kids day in and day out with my own kids friends, but I don’t know what discipline works best for them or if running before you crawl is a normal development. Our pediatrician on the other hand has likely seen what has come of the child who ran before he crawled and is able to say if this is something we might want to look into further.
So please tell me I’m not the only one whose pediatrician sits down and talks about child development and discipline? I mean no one says you have to listen to your pediatrician’s advice of course, but it seems to me this is a good place to start.
And one thing I have learned from having more than one child is that not everyone develops at the same pace or in the same way even. These kids keep us on our toes, but this is why whenever I have a doubt about something I do check with our pediatrician to make sure it’s all within the normal realms of development.
So if your pediatrician strictly about the physical, or does he delve deeper into all aspects of your child’s well being?
